Buy Better, Buy Less

Categories: Be a Smart Consumer, Curious
  • Buy better, Buy less! 
  • Reduce, Repair, Reuse, Recycle (the “Four R’s”)

Two recurring themes:

In 1983, I bought a royal blue Patagonia jacket with a red lining. After several years, three of my children fought over its ownership. Twenty-five years later it still looked new. The only reason we don’t have it anymore is because it was lost or, even more likely, stolen. 

I have a black Patagonia jacket that had a little tear on the sleeve. The Halifax store sent it for repairs. It came back good as new and without a repair charge. I continue to buy various items of Patagonia clothing.  I will never need another raincoat, polar fleece sweater, or jacket again. If I do want to change up items in my Patagonia collection, there will be takers in my family or I can donate said items to charities. 

Buy better, buy less not just for clothes

Better consumer habits can apply to anything we consume. While difficult to apply “repair, reuse”when shopping for food but we can buy and waste less, and recycle. Coffee grounds are great for your garden or sprinkled in your house plants. Organic composting in Montréal reduces the amount of garbage bound for the land fill from our home. 

Don’t buy furniture at Ikea, a company successful in talking green but terrible at being green. Throw away furniture with built-in obsolescence made from clear-cut forests. Buy solid, classical furniture that lasts a life-time, one piece at a time.

Environmental Practice

I have had “environmentalist religion” for may years now but it was a bit like my Catholicism – largely unpracticed. Over the past few years world events, personal circumstances, documentaries, food channels, and casual observation have increased my attendance at the church of the environment.

  • Extreme weather events, wildfires in California and Australia, and rising oceans are inextricably linked to CO2 emissions. Some 97% of the world’s publishing scientists agree on the negative impact of CO2 and the “Oil and Gas Industry” on our world. The other 3% are paid by industry or conservative think-tanks. 
  • Ken Burn’s “The Dustbowl” chronicles the American man-made ecological disaster fuelled by a frenzied wheat boom.

Think About

  • The folly of having two cars in a two-person household. I can walk, cycle, take the bus, or use an Uber as alternative transport.
    • Pet Peeve: Two adult / two teenager households with four cars in the driveway. And, those would be the same families that march with Greta Thunberg on Earth Day and have Save Forests signs on the lawn. They need to walk and take the bus.
  • What you have in your closet because I know I have far too many clothes. So, if I don’t experience any significant weight fluctuation, I could live to a hundred and never have to buy anything but underwear, socks, and shoes. The fashion industry faces increased scrutiny for its environmental impact:
    • It takes 11,000 litres of water to produce  1kg of cotton
    • and 98 million tons of crude petroleum  to produce the annual supply of polyester used in the fashion industry
    • 80% of all clothing sold in the EU ends up in landfill. 
  • Watching “You Gotta Eat Here” or “Dinner, Drive-Ins, and Dives”? I cannot. Just seeing the quantities of bad, greasy food featured just makes me ill. Find a better way to enjoy fantastic food in much smaller quantities. 

We can all do something for our  environment by being better consumers. 

  • Buy better, buy less
  • Reduce, repair, reuse and recycle